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Month: June 2015

Last week the Office of the Vice President for Research had a very successful new event at the National Press Club in Washington DC called Global Grand Challenges: CSU Research and Translation and I wanted to share some of the highlights and excitement generated.

The event’s goals were to raise awareness on CSU centered research aligned with global challenges in optimizing key environmental resources, nourishing the future population of the planet, and accelerating global health solutions to pressing problems. We invited alumni in the area, agency officials and program officers who we targeted by their interests and current funding of CSU and its partners.

The event consisted of three components – our president hosted a luncheon where we heard from Sonny Ramaswammy, the director of NIFA who spoke about these global challenges and how he sees the future challenges and opportunities for land-grant universities and their partners in industry and government. The second component was a three panel afternoon seminar on these grand challenges anchored by senior faculty and including 22 faculty from across campus. We ended the afternoon with an alumni and friends reception hosted by the President.

The event attracted 80 attendees (on a 95 degree day in DC) and generated a tremendous amount of positive energy. Our faculty did an outstanding job of succinctly presenting their passions and commitment to the problems while highlighted CSU successes in breaking down collaborative barriers across campus and into an innovation ecosystem.

The presentations were very well done with a pace and level digestible to broad communities. I received many positive comments after the event from alumni, industry attendees, senior agency officials from DoD, NSF, DoE, and USDA.

A special thanks to all those who made this new event a great success. Responses were so positive that there is interest to repeat the event in DC but also include Denver for our local stakeholders. We will be seeking measures of impact of the event and would be interested in your inputs on this. Some immediate return was the numerous meetings the group took in addition to the event across DC and the awareness our faculty continue to gain by cross campus immersive experiences.